2016 Was A Good Year To Be A Woman Business Owner!

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WWR Article Summary (tl;dr)According to a report commissioned by American Express OPEN, between 2007 and 2016 the number of WOMEN-owned businesses increased by 45 percent!

The News-Journal, Daytona Beach, Fla.

Today is International Women’s Day and March is Women’s History Month. While that is cause enough for celebration, it is also worth noting that 2016 was a good year to be a woman business owner.

According to “The State of Women-Owned Businesses, 2016,” a report commissioned by American Express OPEN, between 2007 and 2016 the number of women-owned businesses increased by 45 percent, compared to an overall 9 percent increase in the number of businesses. The number of businesses owned by women also increased during that period from 29 percent in 2007 to 38 percent in 2016.

And Florida sits at the top of the heap as the fastest-growing state for women-owned businesses, tallying a 67 percent increase over the past nine years.

With all that good news, it would be easy to assume that attitudes about female entrepreneurs have also changed and women no longer face the barriers to success they once did. While some of those hurdles might be easier to clear than in decades past, other challenges have arisen.

“I think the biggest challenge that I’ve seen is when you are a single business owner versus a married business owner,” said Michelle Brown, owner of The Flagler Beach Gift Shop. “There are a lot of challenges there because a lot of activities that would be split between two people are on one person.”

Brown said one area where that is especially true is the lifeblood of small-business creation: access to capital.

“When you are trying to obtain loans that do influence your business, it can become a challenge” as a single person, she said.
Brown also has seen other challenges for women in business.